Beating a Dead Horse but it needs to be: Preauthorization

[FarmAndBar]

We need to be able to preauthorize credit cards when running a tab. Period.  We really enjoyed the low buy in and easy menu development and a couple of the other features, but a bar/restaurant needs to be able to run a tab and preauthorize a credit card.  I've gone back and looked at conversations about it and it appears that this has been a CONSTANT request by users that has gone ignored.

I'd like to know why it isn't available.

[#2]

So sorry for the confusion here, @Amanda_Bierock @FarmAndBar and others!

Pre-Authorization recently became available to all users of Square for Restaurants (Free, Premium, and Plus), and you should be able to turn in on by following the instructions in this support article, via the Dashboard and device settings.

Enable and Configure Pre-Authorization Bar Tabs

If you are using Square for Restaurants and aren't able to enable Pre-Auth by following these steps, please reach out to our support team for assistance.

For businesses that use Square Point of Sale, there is not currently a way to access Pre-Authorization.  While we did run a Beta test last year for Pre-Authorization on Point of Sale, it has been discontinued and Square for Restaurants is the only application that currently supports this functionality.

The team developing Pre-Authorization decided last summer to focus their efforts on Pre-Auth within Square for Restaurants and discontinued the Beta and development of Pre-Auth for Point of Sale.

Some testers who participated in the Point of Sale Beta we ran last year may still have access via their open tickets settings on individual devices (like @ryanwanner) but accounts that were not enrolled in that Beta feature last summer can no longer be added.

@nika I hope this context is helpful when these questions come up - it can be confusing because at times we had a POS Beta on the way.  It's understandable when it's been a request for so long 🙂

Andy
Beta Specialist

[#3]

Hello all! We are so excited to let the community know that this feature is now available for Square for Restaurants! For more information on enabling and configuring preauthorization for bar tabs, check out this help article. Respond here if you have any questions, and thanks for your patience while our team built this out. We appreciate you!

️ Kristen
Square Community Manager
Product Engagement

[#4]

Pre-Authorization for Bar Tabs Update ⭐
Hi everyone - I'm Hadley, from the F&B product team. First of all, thank you SO MUCH for continuing to share all the feedback here over the years, we know how important the Bar Tabs feature is. For anyone who is not aware, this feature is currently in beta in the US for Square for Restaurants POS. 

➡️ You can join the beta community here and our beta team will enable feature to your account. You can find the support article for getting set up on RST POS here. 

As a reminder, when a feature is in beta, there is still some engineering work happening to iron out the smaller bugs and optimizing the experience for our sellers and their customers. If you choose to participate in the beta testing, please share any feedback (good or bad 😄) to our beta team at [email protected] so we can learn how it is working for you and your staff.  

Thank you!

[Bstanton]

Has this damage deposit been figured out? I rent trailers and need to be able to take a damage deposit and refund it without incurring any additional fees. 

[Meloraray]

I also am in need of this feature for my rental business 

[Meloraray]

So I just noticed these posts are over three years old, so this still hasn't been addressed ? Has anyone found a payment app that does hold security deposits ?

[TheEpicWPB]

Can you please explain why a basic commercial function, a deposit/hold, needed by businesses from hotels, B&Bs and vacation rentals, to equipment rentals, to retailers doing pre-orders that need to account differently get ignored by square?

[BHRB]

Lazy good for nothing’s. 

[BHRB]

Use stripe directly, or use a software such as “booqable”

[Meloraray]

Why aren't tall addressing this issue after four years, I rent my camper out for weekend rentals and need to hold a security deposit, rite now I have to charge them pay the fee and then refund it .

[JFV]

Nop.  Nothing yet.

[XtremePwrsports]

We also rent equipment and HAVE to have a way to do pre-authorizations. I have used Square at another business for over 5 years, and it has been awesome. When we opened this business, I made the assumption that Square could do pre-auth as EVERY OTHER credit card processor can do that already.

When will this be added?? What is the hold-up?? 

[APK4L]

I don't think this is coming to Square. When I installed square in March I read back through all these posts. The fact that they stated it was on the roadmap and now are stating that it is not tells me it's bad news.

For me personally (and a lot of others) I don't even necessarily NEED the preauth function, just to be able to save card information with a tab in the Restaurants app. The functionality is literally there but they have it disabled. They could add the feature in a matter of hours but they choose not to. For that reason I just assume it's something that they don't want to mess with. They are losing out in millions of processing from this post alone, but I'm not sure even that moves the needle for them.